


Served Cold

by magnedhead



Category: Legacy of Kain, Original Work
Genre: Action, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Dark Fantasy, Death, Gen, Loneliness, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnedhead/pseuds/magnedhead
Summary: Two vampires, having escaped from the destruction of their clan, search a glacier for food.
Kudos: 1





	Served Cold

**Author's Note:**

> While not written as Legacy of Kain-fanfiction, it is very much inspired by the franchise.

The frigid wind howled along the mountaintops and down into the valleys. The snow that followed covered every surface and filled the air, hiding the towering mountains above. With the wind and the snow, visibility was limited. Even if they could catch scents on the wind, they would hardly have time to notice them before they were gone. So there was nothing for it but search, foot by painstaking foot.

“Find anything?” Lamellia shouted. Her own efforts had been in vain; the tent was long-abandoned and contained nothing of use. The tent-fabric itself would catch too much wind. The only reason that it had not blown away was that the humans had put their campsite in a small crevasse with some shelter from the unrelenting winds. 

“See for yourself.” Her companion replied, so Lamellia bundled her cloak as best she could and hurried through the open air into the relative warmth of the tent Zephel had been examining. He was squatting on the bedrolls that the humans had left behind, his powerful frame seemingly bigger inside this human space. He had picked up a piece of cloth with his three-pronged claws and was smelling it intently. Like hers, his cloak was showing the wear and tear of years on the road. It needed replacing, but Lamellia knew he was loathe to do so. After the humans attacked their clan, the two of them had fled. Neither had met anyone like them in the years that had passed since, and they suspected that they were the sole survivors. Their cloaks carried the black-on-yellow insignia of their clan and they would wear it proudly until they fell apart. 

“What is it?” Lamiella asked and walked closer. The tent was small for her and brushed against her even as she crouched.

Zephel smelled it again and handed it over. Lamiella accepted it and held it as gently as her claws allowed. For a moment she sensed nothing and wondered, only half in jest, if Zephel had finally snapped. But then there was a hint of a scent. It was not blood, but it was a human liquid. It had not yet dried fully, perhaps because of the temperatures, but it could not be more than a few days old.

“Truly the kindred of the almighty Amengol follow the lofty heights of their sire. Excited over finding a snot-cloth.” Zephel said with a wry smile. 

Lamellia glanced at him again. Zephel had been well-blessed by their sire when he had been raised, but the heights of his glory were well behind him. Vampires did not diminish exactly like humans did when denied nourishment, but the signs were visible to an experienced vampire. If there were humans close-by, they could have their first meal for months. It would be sorely needed.

“So what now? We know they’re close by, but this camp seems well and truly abandoned.” Lamellia said and focused on the scent and what it could tell. The human was not in the peak of health, but neither were they dying from an illness. If they had shelter, they would still be alive. Alive and warm. Lamellia suppressed a shiver of hunger. The signs of starvation present on Zephel’s body would be just as prevalent on her own.

“Humans cannot move quickly in this environment. If they are only a few days out then we can catch up to them if we move now.” Zephel replied. He made to stand but gave up when his horns grazed the roof of the tent. 

“I agree, but move where? The glacier’s a big place, Zephel.” 

“We don’t know why the humans are here in this light-forsaken place,” Zephel started, “But then we can assume they too will be moving towards the place with the most possible options.” 

“The mountain passes to the west.” Lamiella concluded. Zephel nodded back.

Their course set, the two vampires left the abandoned campsite, bundled their cloaks and set out to the west. The wind ripped at their cloaks and their hair, but vampires were not as bothered by the cold as humans. As long as their bodies were not frozen solid, they could keep moving. Hunger tore at them constantly but that was a pain they had become accustomed to over the years. They took turns sheltering the other from the wind to conserve energy and moving as quickly as they could through the terrain while keeping firm ground under their feet and the sheer ice-walls on their left. There were many ways of entering or leaving the glacier, but humans were restricted to the mountain passes on the western and eastern edges of the vast ice-shelf. They could not scale the southern ice-walls like Lamiella and Zephel had, as they had no claws. 

By the time the first dark patches of snowless rock appeared out of the blinding storm, Zephel stepped on something that gave way to his weight. The vampires squatted and brushed the snow away to reveal a human corpse. By the stiffness of the body and the sluggishness of the blood, the vampires judged it to have been dead for less than a day. Alas, even such a brief time robbed the blood of much of the nourishment that the vampires could take from it. Even so, they drank their fill. Even if it was meagre, it was the first meal in months. Their fangs were painful in their mouths as if they protested at the quality. As their bodies took in the blood, their vision sharpened. They could see further through the storm and observe more details than before. Their limbs moved with greater ease through the wind and snow. Observing the direction the corpse had been moving, the vampires set out again. The going was easier now and before long, Lamiella caught a scent on the wind. It was faint and gone as quickly as the others, but her senses were sharper now. It was the same as from the snot-cloth they had found in the tent. 

They walked in silence for a while. The winds make conversation difficult and the thoughts of the vampires are on the meal to come and the events of the past. 

Lamiella walked close to Zephel. Bundled up in their cloaks, only their faces and claws are visible. If not for the symbol of their vampiric clan and the size of Zephel’s horns, they would seem like two ordinary travellers. “Zephel, do you think anyone else survived?”

“I would think we would have met them by now if they had.” He replied and kept trudging. 

“What now, then?” Lamiella said. She stopped with her back to the wind, her clan-cloak whipping in front of her.

Zephel stopped in place and looked at her.

“We’re here in this frigid hell-hole to survive, aren’t we? What’s the point of survival if we do nothing with it?” Lamiella shouted. The mountains above them responded with a faint echo, as if to mock her outburst. 

“We tried finding others, Lamiella. Remember how that turned out.” Zephel said while his eyes scanned the glacier around them. 

“I don’t want Clan Amengol to die out simply because the last two survivors froze to their final death in the north.” Lamiella said, keeping her voice under control.

“What would you have us do, then?” Zephel said.

Lamiella had pondered this, in days and nights when the two vampires had been in hiding from hunters or separated following a pursuit. In the silence of loneliness, a thought had gained ground. Old Amengol would have considered it heresy, but his final death had been long ago now.

“We should restore the clan.” Lamiella said. She hoped that Zephel could not hear the doubt in her voice.

Zephel was silent for a moment. Lamiella’s tension rose with every second and she was near to bursting when her companion spoke. “We are only kindred, Lamiella, not true vampires.”

“That doesn’t make it impossible–” Lamiella started.

“But it makes it blasphemous,” Zephel interrupted, “Amengol made that very clear.”

“Amengol is dead, Zephel. We cannot even be sure there are any true vampires left. As you yourself said, we have not met any other vampires in our travels, kindred or true.” Lamiella said.

When Zephel did not reply, Lamiella continued. “I heard about a clan started by a kindred. It’s possible.”

“If we return to the clan sanctuary, we might find some clues as to how it could be done. Why else exist, if we’re just surviving simply to survive?” Lamiella finished and turned away from Zephel. The wind carried another trace of the human scent past Lamiella’s nose and she had to struggle to keep her thoughts on the future rather than on a possible meal.

Zephel stepped up beside her. “I stand by Amengol’s decree. I refuse to sire my own.” 

Her companion turned towards her. “But if you wish to do so, I will not stop you.”

He paused for a moment. “Whether you stick to the Amengol name or call it Clan Lamiella.”

Lamiella turned to Zephel with a rare grin on her face. “Zephel, Champion of Clan Lamiella. It has a ring to it, does it not?”

An hour later, the two vampires approached a cleft in the landscape. Natural forces had carved a safe place from the unrelenting winds of the northern glacier, and there, two humans had made camp. A single tent stood facing the cliffside. Packs had been left next to a campfire that let out a thin trail of dark smoke that was whipped away by the wind as soon as it left the cleft. 

With considerable self-control, Zephel and Lamiella held themselves back from simply storming the camp; they had survived past the destruction of their clan by being cautious. They found a place covered in shadow on the shelf above the cleft and waited, observing. The two must be family or married, if Lamiella was any judge of human relations. She knew that she must have been human at some point in her existence, all kindred vampires had. But like most, she had no memories of her human life. Zephel claimed to have memories of his very early human life, but Lamiella had never asked him to expand upon that claim. Only true vampires were born as such, and no kindred vampire that Lamiella had ever heard of had risen to be recognised as a true vampire. Before the fall of the clan, she had heard of a clan in the far west that had been sired by a kindred vampire, an ability normally reserved for true vampires. Clan Mellot. But she had never met any vampire that claimed to descend from that particular clan, so she could never be sure. 

In the cleft below, the humans were bedding down for the night. The man doused the campfire while the woman climbed into the tent. Lamiella and Zephel exchanged a look. It was time. 

They waited until the man busied himself with carrying packs into the tent and then dropped down the walls of the cleft until they could approach the tent from his blind side. Lamiella subconsciously extended her fangs. They hurt her gums, but with a meal so close, she barely registered the pain. Zephel was in front and signaled for Lamiella to wait a moment. He would create an opening for her to strike. She positioned herself opposite the tent’s entrance and waited, wary of her shadow showing on the tent-walls. Zephel crouched behind one of the big boulders that lay in the centre of the cleft and, picking up a sizable rock, threw it at the wall of the cleft. The impact was noisy enough on its own, as was the clatter of rocks that tumbled from the wall. After a moment the man emerged from the tent and looked around, muttering words in the language of more civilised places. The woman peeked out between the tent flaps but did not leave the tent. Lamiella used her claws to cut the fabric of the tent and slip inside. The inside of the tent was warm and plush, a far cry from the glacier less than a hundred meters away. It was also filled with the scent of humans, and Lamiella could wait no longer. She reached out fast as a viper and sunk her claws into the woman’s shoulder. The woman cried out as Lamiella pulled her into her embrace. Lamiella’s fangs pierced her skin with the greatest of ease and the vampire began to feed. The woman swatted at Lamiella’s face and claws, but to no avail. Within seconds, the blood had restored her vampiric strength. It had been months since her last meal and the intoxicating effect of the blood closed her perception of the world around her. Her vision became red and her ears ignored the pleas of the human.

The man turned towards the woman’s distress immediately and went for the crossbow that he had placed just within the entrance of the tent, but she was in the way of the creature attacking her. He could see her weakening and growing paler as the parasitic monster drained her. The moment her cries ceased and she began to slacken in the monster’s grip, a second monster grabbed him from behind. He had been distracted by the struggle inside the tent and had not heard it approach. His legs were kicked out from under him and he hit the ground. He attempted to cry out for help, for his wife, for anyone, but a bony claw gripped him by the throat and sharp fangs pierced the side of his neck. Within minutes, both humans were pale and dead, drained of their life’s blood. Lamiella and Zephel sat outside the tent, side by side. Steam rose from Zephel’s open mouth as he looked up at the sky. The winds crossing the glacier had changed direction subtly and a few flakes of snow were entering the cleft. The vampires were drunk on blood, lost in the feelings of power that came with that vital fluid. The cold air in the cleft could not touch them now, and their senses would pierce the blizzard as if it had never been. The plans that Lamiella had talked about earlier came back in startling clarity, and with fresh blood coursing through their veins and empowering their bodies, it seemed not just possible, but a matter of course. 

Lamiella’s mind was caught up in thoughts of the future whereas Zephel’s was more grounded. So when boots crunched the snow at the entrance to the cleft, Zephel was the first to notice. A group of humans entered the cleft, clad in leather and white tabards. The weapons in their hands rung the first alarm-bell in Zephel’s mind and the symbol on their tabards rung the second. It was a simple affair; a sword impaling a fanged skull. The first time Zephel had seen that was at the attack on their clan. It denoted vampire hunters. 

“Lamiella, we have to leave, now.” Zephel said and rose. The hunters cannot have arrived here by accident. They were not members of the party they had ambushed, or there would have been many more tents. For that matter, how had they crossed the glacier? He could not see a fur cloak among them. 

Lamiella was sluggish to respond, her eyes jittery in their sockets but seeing little. It took a long moment before she rose to her feet and looked up. The advance members of the hunters pointed at the two of them and shouted. The group parted and a man carrying a staff walked out in front. The tip of the staff glowed with a fierce, warm light. Zephel could feel the heat rolling off of the magic even though they were nearly 50 metres apart. So that was how they had survived the cold. Around the mage, the other hunters were pulling out crossbows. From the look of the bolts, Zephel was sure they were silvered.

“Unholy creatures of the night!” The mage shouted, “You will pay for your blasphemy on our world and for the unjust slaughter of these innocents!” 

Zephel glanced down. The corpse of the man he had fed on was on the ground at his feet. He was surprised they could see it from there. 

“Lamiella!,” He hissed, “Snap out of it!” He bunched up his claws and punched her in the shoulder. He felt some relief when she rolled with the punch and her eyes sharpened. But they were out of time to discuss or wake up. The mage signaled to fire and the hunters behind him raised their crossbows. Zephel shook Lamiella one last time and took off, running for the walls of the cleft. Bolts pinged off the rocks around him as his claws gave him purchase on the rock-wall. 

Lamiella moved quickly, her abilities boosted by the recent feast, but her start was too slow. As she reached the base of the wall, a bolt hit her in the side. She hissed against the pain as the silvered tip burned through her skin, and she managed to pull herself up by two arm-lengths before a second bolt hit her in the right shoulder. She lost her grip and tumbled from the climb, landing on her back in the snow. The hunters cheered and began to move into the cleft while reloading the crossbows while the mage looked on with a pleased expression. 

“Zephel, help!” Lamiella called out and looked up. Zephel had already scaled the wall and was out of sight.

“Zephel!” She called out again. Was this it? Had he abandoned her so easily after years on the road together?

She pushed the thought from her mind and stood up. The hunters were slowly surrounding her and pulling an assortment of weapons from their back. She did not need to look closely at their weapons to know that they would be silvered as well. The bolts still burned in her side. Lamiella slowly backed up towards the cleft wall while removing the bolts with her left hand. Her right arm couldn’t muster the strength.

“How did you blind bastards find us?” Lamiella asked, her eyes fixed on the hunters closing in on her. 

“The Lord guides us in our pursuit of vile monsters like you. You cannot escape His gaze.” The mage said with smug satisfaction. 

“The Lord protects his flock.” One of the hunters said, kneeling besides the corpse of the man Zephel had drained. 

“Clearly this frigid hellhole is beyond the reach of your Lord.” 

As a response, the hunter fished inside the man’s vest and pulled out a symbol on a leather cord. Lamiella recognised it as the crook-symbol of the travelling folk; this pair had not been followers of the Lord. How convenient.

“Even your fellow abandoned you. You monsters have no loyalty.” Another hunter said and brandished a silver-tipped spear. With a cry to the Lord, he charged and thrust his spear at Lamiella, but with her blood-sharpened awareness, the thrust was sluggish. She sidestepped the attack and grabbed the shaft of the spear with her left and pulled. The man was pulled off balance and onto her claws, from which his leathers could not protect him. For the second time in many months, fresh blood sprayed across her face as she opened the man’s chest and throat with a swipe of her claw. The blood stung her gums and throat, but she licked her lips eagerly. She held her weakened right arm behind her and readied the spear. 

Lamiella raised the stolen spear and threw it like a javelin at one of the men. He managed to throw himself to the side quickly enough that it only grazed his side, but the distraction it provided was far deadlier. The vampire charged in the moment he looked away and eviscerated him with her claws. The white of the tabard was stained with blood as he went down. But Lamiella paid for her charge, as another hunter slashed her across her left shoulder with a sword. The cut was not deep, but the wound burned with flakes of silver from the blade. She hissed in pain and retaliated. When the man blocked her claws, she struck out with a kick and sent him onto his backside. There she could have finished him but his comrades counterattacked and she had to leap back towards the rock wall to avoid their weapons. She wished dearly that she had magic, but that was the province of true vampires, not kindred. Lamiella lashed out at the closing hunters, hissed and roared but it achieved little. They were seasoned hunters and had faced vampires before. If she could break the encirclement and escape, they would not be able to pursue her out on the glacier, with or without magic. She waited a moment while the formation reshuffled and closed around her then charged at a point where the line weakened. A young man with surprise and confusion clear on his face tried to raise his woodsman’s-axe but the vampire was too fast, her claws shearing a chunk of flesh from his arm and opening an artery. He screamed as she leapt past him and she was free from the encirclement. The mage was the only obstacle between her and the exit. 

Lamiella only managed a few steps before she felt an impact on her back and she tumbled forwards. Between the folds of her cloak she could see a crossbow bolt sticking out, her blood sizzling on the silvered point. Even as she reached for it to remove it, another bolt hit her in the right shoulder. It took all she had to raise herself on her elbows and get onto her back. The sky above was grey, with flecks of snow drifting down. For a moment, everything was calm and quiet, before the hunters surrounded her again with weapons raised. She tried to raise her arm, but she could barely move. 

The mage’s voice rose again. “Today is truly a day to celebrate, for today we usher another damned soul to purgatory. Today, Clan Amengol is-

The rest of the man’s speech was cut off by an impact and a screech. Lamiella craned her neck to look up and saw Zephel’s powerful frame behind the mage. The staff lay in the snow a few meters away and Zephel had a claw under the mage’s chin. 

“You speak the truth, mage, it is indeed a day to celebrate. It is a rarity that I get my hands on such interesting blood.” With that, Zephel plunged his fangs into the man’s neck. The hunters cried out in curses and moved to help, but Zephel put a claw to the mage’s neck.

“Careful now, you would not want me to slip, would you?” The blood stood out in stark contrast to Zephel’s pale skin. The travelling folk had been a meal, but this was a show. The mage gasped in pain and horror as the vampire drank his fill. After a long moment, Zephel raised his head and licked his lips. The mage was pale but alive. Zephel did not allow him to speak further. With a swift motion, he twisted the mage’s head far beyond the tolerance of the human body and ripped it from his shoulders. Blood sprayed across Zephel’s face, further demonising his appearance. The head rolled in the snow, leaving an arc of blood, its expression one of horror. Zephel discarded the mage’s body and stepped forward, the grin on his face gone, claws ready. 

“Damn you, monster!” One of the hunters shouted. Several others drew crossbows and fired, but Zephel was already moving. One bolt hit him in the side but he pushed through the pain and struck the nearest hunter, his sharp claws making a mockery of the man’s armour. A spear cut through Zephel’s cloak and drew blood; Zephel countered, leaving the man stumbling backwards with his guts in his hands. 

Lamiella tried to rise, to help, but the hunter standing over her ran his spear through her stomach, pinning her to the ground. She grunted with the pain. It wasn’t silvered, but the silver already in her system was suppressing her powers. She heard another noise of metal-on-flesh and saw Zephel tumbling away from a man with a battle-axe. Zephel had rammed his right arm through a man’s chest, but the dying hunter held on with his dying breath, slowing down the vampire’s movement. A hunter shouted a command and the group backed away. Zephel tried to dislodge the deadweight on his arm, but the man’s death-grip was tight. The hunters drew out crossbows and fired, hitting Zephel several times in the arms and legs. With a gasp he collapsed in the dirt next to Lamiella. He was just close enough that he could reach out and take Lamiella’s hand. 

One of the hunters kicked at their hands. “You monsters! Gerion’s dead! You killed our ticket home!” Another kick, but he couldn’t budge their grip. 

“Shut it, Lars. The Lord protects, we’ll find a way home.” Another hunter said. 

“Finish the leeches off, and we’ll see what we can use from the camp.”

“All rise for Lamiella, great sire of the clan.” Zephel whispered. Lamiella heard no reproach in his voice. She grinned back at him, for she could speak no words. She would have liked to thank him, here at the end of the road, but she could only close her claws tighter. The last thing she saw before the hunters ended her life was Zephel’s smiling face.


End file.
